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      Measured Parental Weight Status and Familial Socio-Economic Status Correlates with Childhood Overweight and Obesity at Age 9

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          Abstract

          Background

          Parental obesity is a predominant risk factor for childhood obesity. Family factors including socio-economic status (SES) play a role in determining parent weight. It is essential to unpick how shared family factors impact on child weight. This study aims to investigate the association between measured parent weight status, familial socio-economic factors and the risk of childhood obesity at age 9.

          Methodology/Principal Findings

          Cross sectional analysis of the first wave (2008) of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study. GUI is a nationally representative study of 9-year-old children (N = 8,568). Schools were selected from the national total (response rate 82%) and age eligible children (response rate 57%) were invited to participate. Children and their parents had height and weight measurements taken using standard methods. Data were reweighted to account for the sampling design. Childhood overweight and obesity prevalence were calculated using International Obesity Taskforce definitions. Multinomial logistic regression examined the association between parent weight status, indicators of SES and child weight. Overall, 25% of children were either overweight (19.3%) or obese (6.6%). Parental obesity was a significant predictor of child obesity. Of children with normal weight parents, 14.4% were overweight or obese whereas 46.2% of children with obese parents were overweight or obese. Maternal education and household class were more consistently associated with a child being in a higher body mass index category than household income. Adjusted regression indicated that female gender, one parent family type, lower maternal education, lower household class and a heavier parent weight status significantly increased the odds of childhood obesity.

          Conclusions/Significance

          Parental weight appears to be the most influential factor driving the childhood obesity epidemic in Ireland and is an independent predictor of child obesity across SES groups. Due to the high prevalence of obesity in parents and children, population based interventions are required.

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          Most cited references26

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          Socioeconomic status and obesity: a review of the literature.

          J Sobal, A Stunkard (1989)
          A review of 144 published studies of the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity reveals a strong inverse relationship among women in developed societies. The relationship is inconsistent for men and children in developed societies. In developing societies, however, a strong direct relationship exists between SES and obesity among men, women, and children. A review of social attitudes toward obesity and thinness reveals values congruent with the distribution of obesity by SES in different societies. Several variables may mediate the influence of attitudes toward obesity and thinness among women in developed societies that result in the inverse relationship between SES and obesity. They include dietary restraint, physical activity, social mobility, and inheritance.
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            Genetic and environmental factors in relative body weight and human adiposity.

            H Maes, M. C. Neale, L J Eaves (1997)
            We review the literature on the familial resemblance of body mass index (BMI) and other adiposity measures and find strikingly convergent results for a variety of relationships. Results from twin studies suggest that genetic factors explain 50 to 90% of the variance in BMI. Family studies generally report estimates of parent-offspring and sibling correlations in agreement with heritabilities of 20 to 80%. Data from adoption studies are consistent with genetic factors accounting for 20 to 60% of the variation in BMI. Based on data from more than 25,000 twin pairs and 50,000 biological and adoptive family members, the weighted mean correlations are .74 for MZ twins, .32 for DZ twins, .25 for siblings, .19 for parent-offspring pairs, .06 for adoptive relatives, and .12 for spouses. Advantages and disadvantages of twin, family, and adoption studies are reviewed. Data from the Virginia 30,000, including twins and their parents, siblings, spouses, and children, were analyzed using a structural equation model (Stealth) which estimates additive and dominance genetic variance, cultural transmission, assortative mating, nonparental shared environment, and special twin and MZ twin environmental variance. Genetic factors explained 67% of the variance in males and females, of which half is due to dominance. A small proportion of the genetic variance was attributed to the consequences of assortative mating. The remainder of the variance is accounted for by unique environmental factors, of which 7% is correlated across twins. No evidence was found for a special MZ twin environment, thereby supporting the equal environment assumption. These results are consistent with other studies in suggesting that genetic factors play a significant role in the causes of individual differences in relative body weight and human adiposity.
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              An obesity-associated FTO gene variant and increased energy intake in children.

              Joanne Cecil, Roger Tavendale, Peter Watt … (2008)
              Variation in the fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene has provided the most robust associations with common obesity to date. However, the role of FTO variants in modulating specific components of energy balance is unknown. We studied 2726 Scottish children, 4 to 10 years of age, who underwent genotyping for FTO variant rs9939609 and were measured for height and weight. A subsample of 97 children was examined for possible association of the FTO variant with adiposity, energy expenditure, and food intake. In the total study group and the subsample, the A allele of rs9939609 was associated with increased weight (P=0.003 and P=0.049, respectively) and body-mass index (P=0.003 and P=0.03, respectively). In the intensively phenotyped subsample, the A allele was also associated with increased fat mass (P=0.01) but not with lean mass. Although total and resting energy expenditures were increased in children with the A allele (P=0.009 and P=0.03, respectively), resting energy expenditure was identical to that predicted for the age and weight of the child, indicating that there is no defect in metabolic adaptation to obesity in persons bearing the risk-associated allele. The A allele was associated with increased energy intake (P=0.006) independently of body weight. In contrast, the weight of food ingested by children who had the allele was similar to that in children who did not have the allele (P=0.82). The FTO variant that confers a predisposition to obesity does not appear to be involved in the regulation of energy expenditure but may have a role in the control of food intake and food choice, suggesting a link to a hyperphagic phenotype or a preference for energy-dense foods. 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                : Role: Editor
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE
                Journal ID (publisher-id): plos
                Journal ID (pmc): plosone
                Title: PLoS ONE
                Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203
                Publication date Collection: 2012
                Publication date (Electronic): 17 August 2012
                Volume: 7
                Issue: 8
                Electronic Location Identifier: e43503
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department Epidemiology and Public Health, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
                [2 ]Economic and Social Research Institute, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin, Ireland
                Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Malawi
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: RL. Analyzed the data: EK RL. Wrote the paper: EK RL JH PMK IJP.

                Article
                Publisher ID: PONE-D-12-13432
                DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043503
                PMC ID: 3422292
                PubMed ID: 22912886
                SO-VID: 7070591e-6266-492e-8e20-a157fa547e92
                Copyright statement: Copyright @ 2012
                License:

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                Date received : 10 May 2012
                Date accepted : 25 July 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 9
                Funding
                The Growing Up in Ireland study is funded by the Government of Ireland through the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in association with the Department of Social Protection and the Central Statistics Office. This present research is funded by the National Children’s Research Centre, Crumlin, Dublin ( http://www.nationalchildrensresearchcentre.ie/project/view/35). The funders of this present research had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Subject: Research Article
                Subject: Biology
                Subject: Population Biology
                Subject: Epidemiology
                Subject: Medicine
                Subject: Epidemiology
                Subject: Pediatric Epidemiology
                Subject: Social Epidemiology
                Subject: Survey Methods
                Subject: Nutrition
                Subject: Obesity
                Subject: Public Health
                Subject: Child Health
                Subject: Preventive Medicine
                Subject: Socioeconomic Aspects of Health

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized
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                ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized

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